English Cottage Inspired Kitchen Renovation

In todays post I will be sharing how we transformed our 90’s dated kitchen into the English cottage kitchen of my dreams, all on a pretty tight budget!

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English Cottage Inspired Kitchen Renovation

In case you are new here, last year we had the opportunity to purchase my Grandparents parents home that they built in 1997, and had never done any updating to over the years.

It was definitely a project that need some real elbow grease and since our budget was tight because of the square footage of this hime, all 2000 sq feet on the main floor, we needed to get creative with using pre-existing materials.

A look back …

Let’s take a look back at what the kitchen looked like when we moved in. My Grandma was a fan of the peach and dark green color combo. They had orang oak cabinets installed, and although the tone of the wood wasn’t my favourite the actual cabinets were in great shape!

90's kitchen with oak cabinets and forest green laminate countertop

90's kitchen with oak cabinets and forest green laminate countertop and white stove and microwave

We decided we would keep the existing cabinets, but just refinish them. We also took down the wall where the stove was and because we wanted a butlers pantry we redesigned the layout to be one long wall with our sink, fridge and stove, and then a large island with storage on both sides of the island.

Once all the cabinets were in place we had our painters paint the cabinets Swiss coffee by Benjamin Moore. However although I did sample this color all over the house prior to settling on it, once it was on the cabinets it ended up looking way to bland and open dimensional. Ah paint. Always so much fun haha

the first stage of our 90's kitchen renovation, with white kitchen cabinets and White Island

Paint colors we used for our kitchen

So since the house was already finished being painted, I sat with the kitchen this was for a couple months before finally getting up the energy to repaint the cabinets myself.

I had originally wanted to try stripping the orange color from the wood and resting the island, to have a wooden island but Jade wasn’t sure if it would work and it would be a costly mistake if we had the painters do all that work only for the natural orange tannins in the oak to come back through so we painted it.

But now that I was going to repaint it I had an idea. Couldn’t I paint the cabinets to look like grain? Here is my post on how I achieved the wooden look you see now on our finished kitchen

DIY FAUX WOOD CABINETS

I painted the back wall of cabinets natural tan by sherwin Williams, which is my new favourite paint color for creating a warm and cozy vibe. Tan is usually a very tricky color to find the right shade as it can easily lean pink or even purple in a room. Natural tan looks like a true tan color without any pink undertones.

Back wall of cabinets – Natural Tan by Sherwin Williams
Island paint and stain – Rodeo Tan by Behr, & Water based wood stain Early American by Behr

Lighting and decor sources

Scroll through the thumbnail photos above ad click on any of the picture to be taken to the shop we purchased them from.

To save money we also decided to forgo a traditional title backsplash and used headboard or wainscoting instead. However m most traditional wainscoting is made of 2″ wide lines, and we wanted something that looked a little less formal so we found 4″ wide beadboard and painted it in natural tan by sherwin Williams as well.

We also found a solid pine door to our butlers pantry at an amazing price and when it arrived we were shocked at the quality of it. It was amazing, and again so much cheaper than anything I could find locally.

I had seen our island lights in a kitchen designed by studio McGee and fell in love. But once I saw the price tag I was so discouraged. You can imagine my joy when I came across what appear to be the exact same lights for a fraction of the cost. Island pendant source.

I am also a huge fan of all the beautiful traditional style stoves you see all over instagrams and pinterest but because we live in Canada the most popular brand ILVE isn’t available and would be extremely expensive to import. I found a beautiful option that is made in Canada and still has those traditional vibes and old fashioned look but for a fraction of the price. Range source link.

Lastly I found a super affordable farmhouse sink that isn’t from Ikea. And a beautiful brass faucet that we absolutely love. Farmhouse sink source, faucet source link.